NASA Review Heralds Design Phase

Orbital Reef is a planned low Earth orbit (LEO) space station designed jointly by Blue Origin, the sub-orbital spaceflight concern founded by Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos’s, and Sierra Space, the Nevada based, private aerospace and national security contractor behind over four-hundred successful space launches.

Technologies germane to the development of the Orbital Reef facility are being developed in cooperation with NASA, under the agency’s Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Development (CLDP) program.

The business of space exploration exceeds the purview of any one agency, government, or consortium of governments. Only by fostering the privatization of orbital and extraterrestrial endeavors might the fullness of humanity’s ambitions and abilities be adequately brought to bear upon the challenges of space’s final and infinite frontier. Ergo, through initiatives such as the CLDP program, NASA seeks to shift orbital research and exploration to private companies and commercial space stations—thereby stimulating the growth of an inchoate space economy.

In August 2022, Blue Origin and Sierra Space completed Orbital Reef’s System Definition Review (SDR) with NASA. The SDR is a program milestone that establishes the space station’s functional baseline—which is to say it demonstrates to NASA that Orbital Reef’s design is feasible and achievable while validating that the project is on-track to proceed into its design phase.

The Orbital Reef SDR—which was conducted by representatives of Blue Origin, Sierra Space, and NASA—included an extensive review of the proposed station’s architecture, specifically its compatibility with extant functional and performance requirements. Conclusions drawn by NASA during the SDR supported the space agency’s decision to further develop Orbital Reef’s system architecture and design.

Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice remarked: “We are on the doorstep of the most profound industrial revolution in human history. An industrial revolution marked by the transition from the last 60 years of space exploration to a future where humanity extends our factories and cities into space.”

Blue Origin senior vice president of developmental programs Brent Sherwood added: “This SDR moves Orbital Reef forward. We are meeting the needs of both the commercial marketplace and NASA’s requirements. Orbital Reef will change the game for human space flight in Earth orbit.”

Orbital Reef represents a business model apt to open the next chapter of human space exploration with the greatest of all skeleton keys—monetization. By establishing cost competitive end-to-end services such as space transportation and logistics, space habitation, and equipment accommodation and operation, Orbital Reef will afford businesses and entrepreneurs opportunity to set up shop in orbit, and in so doing, give rise to an open, vigorous market, the products and services of which stand to significantly benefit the whole of mankind.

Orbital Reef is expected to be operational by 2027.

FMI: www.orbitalreef.com